The Why & How of Woodworking

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Michael Pekovich, The Why & How of Woodworking, Taunton Press, 2018

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When most of us say we’ve been working on a project for six months, what we probably mean is that we spent five and a half months of that time not working on it. When I’m asked how can I get so much woodworking done with such a busy schedule, the most important reason is that I make a point to go into my shop just about every day. That rarely means a full day and often means as little as 15 minutes or so. The important thing is to get in there. No matter how slowly a project may feel like it’s progressing, it will be moving forward if you continue to chip away at it.

Making Shoji

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Toshio Odate, Making Shoji, Linden Publishing, 2000

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Many craftsmen I know believe that the mechanics of exposed joints spoil the aesthetic value of interior woodworking. What I have mentioned here is a small detail of the Japanese woodworking tradition, but it is an important key to understanding Japanese aesthetic values and Japanese attitudes.

Greene & Greene Furniture : Poems of Wood & Light

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David Mathias, Greene & Greene Furniture : Poems of Wood & Light, Popular Woodworking Books, 2010

The Greene & Greene design vocabulary is rich and varied with a number of well-recognized elements. Among the best known are cloud lifts, ebony pegs and bread board ends.

Greene & Greene were obsessive in their pursuit of detail nirvana. They would expend thought, effort and their clients’ money on elements that few but the servants would ever see. The backs of cabinets are prepared and finished with the same care as the fronts.

 

Four Corner Continuous Grain Box

Posted on by 00heights

My friend Peter is running a dusk mask business. The packaging for his mask is a paper box. It is sturdy, light weight and doing a good job, but for esthetic reason it would be great with a wooden box. A box that is not just a container for shipping but a showcase box while not in use.

To fulfill dual purposes, storage and showcase, the bottom which holds the mask could be used as a lid which resides on top of box body. Therefore, I need two identical bottom-opened boxes with two different heights. The bottom box is low and has a platform to hold and show the mask. The top box is high and enclose the mask to protect and hide it.

Making a perfectly aligned, also four corner continuous grain box is not an easy matter, but I found a good article on that topic in the Fine Woodworking magazine. Using a stock which has more than twice the thickness of the box wall, resaw it into two halves. The resawn surface will be the outer face of the box. Flipping the face is important here to make a four corner continuous grain box. Cut mitres and assemble it. Cut the box into two halves horizontally using table saw or bandsaw. By doing that, you can get a perfectly aligned box with a lid.

O2 Mask Box

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Day Bed

Posted on by 00heights

Living in a house with small deck in the backyard, I wanted to go out, have a sit or lay down to cool down my body in a summer night. Buying something to fill that small space was not my preference, so I decided to make one.

I recalled ‘pyung-sang’, a low rise wide day bed. It is usually 2m wide, 2m long and 30cm high with wood strips on top for good air flow. Low rise tables are usually for a floor sitting culture. They are usually found under a large tree in rural area or a space between house wall and building.

It is an outdoor furniture, so cedar is a natural choice of wood which is weather resistant. Due to its light weight, cedar furniture is good for mobility. Even though cedar is light weight wood, 4 square meter table might not be a good choice for movable furniture. Therefore I broke it down to four pieces. The final dimension was determined by 2 feet wide, 3 feet long and 1 foot high.

For the joinery, I used half-laped bridle joints for the frame and dovetail crossed lap joints for the center stretcher. Those joints are not so difficult to cut with hand tools. Another benefit of that joinery is that they are self aligned, so no clamps are necessary for assembly.

Day Bed

DayBed